Changes and Typewriters
This is being written on a manual typewriter. Even though everyone who reads this will see it on a computer screen, I assure you that as I compose these words I am using all the strength in my fingers to make metal typing levers fly up and whack an ink-covered ribbon with a loud clacking noise, moving the carriage forward another space and printing a letter on a physical piece of paper. Typing this way is indeed a challenge, but an intoxicating one—I imagine, rather like the challenge of drinking a fine wine for the first time. Anyway, I greatly look forward to improving my skill with this machine in the future.
As I use this portable printing press, the question of why must inevitably arise. In fact, a little thought (like Pope’s “little learning”) is enought to make it seem dangerously insane. Think of the computer technology that no one uses because it is obsolete. But when this technology was itself fresh out of the cradle, the manual typewriter I am using was already a dinosaur. In fact, it would have been rather ridiculous even back when the Web could only be used to communicate messages as simple (and yet profound) as “Some pig”. So why on earth would I deliberately confine myself to such an outdated word processing device when we now have so much more efficient ways of giving visible form to words? Furthermore, why am I posting this on the blog of the Wabash Conservative Union?
I think a typewriter is a useful jumping-off place for thinking about a variety of topics. Let us consider the form and function of a typewriter. It is a tool for putting words on paper, just like a printing press or an ordinary pencil. It is prosaic, mechanical, and purely utilitarian. That people can be nostalgic about typewriters is the clearest proof of the fact that nostalgia can be applied to absolutely anything. And yet when we use a rather ordinary tool such as one of these writing implements, we should not forget its ultimate purpose, its final cause. Its purpose is not just to put marks on paper, but the very special kinds of marks we call words, language. And language is far from prosaic and purely utilitarian: a word is an incarnate thought, a messenger from heaven. Since it is incarnate, it will have a different character depending on what kind of body it has, and its body will depend on how it is conceived and delivered: on a typewriter, or Microsoft Word, or a simple text editor, or a pencil, or a ballpoint pen, or a quill pen, or a fountain pen, or a stylus scratching on clay. Therefore, seemingly unimportant considerations such as the method of transcription may have great and often unpredicted effects on the final result.
Right now I don’t propose to get into writing and language and what they are and how they should be used. If you want more on that, I suggest you talk to Dr. Campbell, or see Dr. Benedicks’s Chapel Talk. My purpose is only to suggest that the possibility should not be discounted that external factors may make a significant difference in the way one writes. One might be sitting at a desk in silence and solitude scratching a pen along a piece of paper, or sitting at a manual typewriter making constant physical exertion and hearing a loud clacking noise, or sitting at a computer, straining his eyes somewhat and yet other than that physically at rest—a sheer impossibility while performing the fatiguing tasks of writing longhand or typing manually.
What difference is there likely to be? Perhaps C.S. Lewis was right when he advised a young writer never to use a typewriter because the noise would disturb her sense of rhythym. On the other hand, perhaps a little disturbance is needed. Imagine Thomas Jefferson writing the Declaration of Indepence, isolated in a private room at that famous writing desk, the only sound his quill pen dragging across the parchment. What does that have to do with the real world? Look at the things he was complaining of in that document—a tyrannical king, stepping on the law and on the authority of Parliament, pushing his own agenda without regard to legality or the will of the people (this may sound familiar, but never mind), plundering, ravaging, burning, destroying, exciting domestic insurrections. Does it ring false for him to write about these things while sitting in quiet, waving a white feather? Perhaps he should have had a typewriter so he could have heard some noise: as Screwtape called it, “the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile.” Better yet, a computer so that he could receive constant updates on the progress of the war while writing. Even while he complained of the injustice, he would actually hear the cries of the widows and orphans. Would that have resulted in a document to better express the American mind?
Perhaps. It could be so argued. On the other hand, perhaps he was more fortunate than he knew in not sharing the fate of us Wabash students who try to perform similar work to his in crowded, noisy computer labs. Perhaps being caught up on all the breaking news is not the most important part of knowing the truth of a situation, and perhaps one can hear the cry of the poor better in one’s soul when there is less to hear in the ears. As for the usefulness of inner peace and quiet to give full play to the creative faculties, let’s not even go there. Who knows what inner peace is anymore?
It is clear at any rate that the methods used to give birth to words have changed over the years, while the underlying goal has remained the same: to use words to communicate thoughts as effectively as possible. Now I’d like to transfer this line of thought to a higher plane—not just language, but learning itself. Let us suppose—and even this has been challenged, but let us suppose—that the purpose of the existence of Wabash College has always been to educate students in something called the Liberal Arts, a mysterious something that everyone talks about while no one seems to know what it is, except that all are convinced that anything they want for the College, perhaps on completely different grounds, such as C&T, teacher education, a strong pre-med program, a Latin major, or new athletic fields, is an essential part of it. Let us further assume that the many changes which have been made in the Wabash curriculum since its inception have been for the purpose of serving that end. (For a brief overview of these changes, see the first part of Dean Bambrey’s magnificent Chapel Talk, which I highly recommend to all Wabash men who missed it.) This could be done because the curriculum has never existed for its own sake, but is a means to an end. Furthermore, that end is not to produce doctors, lawyers, salesmen, athletes, teachers, ministers, or classicists, but gentlemen, men who are liberally educated. What exactly constitutes a gentleman or liberal education has always been far from clear, but we can agree on the principle. The definition has certainly varied over the years, as well, but the changing definitions are only to serve something greater than themselves.
The curriculum changes seem to be as inevitable as the changes in transcription methods to keep pace with the ever-advancing march of technology. A typewriter and a required four years of Latin are obsolete in just the same way. As Dean Bambrey so rightly told us (if you haven’t listened to that talk, please do so immediately), change is inevitable. However, I think at this point the talk, which I am so thankful to have heard, makes a leap of logic. We have already considered the possibility that changes in writing technology might have unforeseen consequences, and that the resulting changes might not have to be for the better. Now, learning is a greater thing than language, and a college curriculum is more than writing. The stakes are higher and the difficulty is even greater. If, then, even the change from a typewriter to a word processor should be done with fear and trembling, how much more the change to a different liberal arts curriculum! And there is no guarantee that the right decision will be made, any more than you can be sure you aren’t draining your soul every time you write a paper on Microsoft Word. Please don’t laugh. You can’t claim it doesn’t sometimes feel that way.
Therefore, I encourage you to listen critically to certain parts of the talk linked above. When you hear that all changes at Wabash are for the good of the students, “whether they believe it or not”, please don’t let that pass without a very small shudder. It’s true that we are often too dumb to know what’s best for us, but that’s too similar to the rhetoric that builds tyrannies. A curriculum or a piece of it, from an all-college course to a French department, is but a tool. One always has the option of putting down one tool and picking up another, thinking it will be more suitable to the job at hand. But you do so at your own risk and the risk of all who are depending on you to do the work for which you are using the tool. No matter how many faults the old tool had, the new one may have more. You might discard a dull paring knife only to find yourself with a warped potato peeler.
I’m not saying anything wildly subversive here; I’m simply preaching the basic conservative philosophy. There is such a thing as change that is not for the better. Things worsen every day. No matter where the change comes from—the president of the United States, the king of England, or the administration of one’s beloved college—no change should be accepted purely because it is change and change always happens. Each case must be argued on its own merits.
This is my challenge to anyone still reading: don’t be afraid to argue with the inevitable. Don’t be cowed by statements that change is inevitable (always true in general, but always false in particular cases), that it is always for your good (that’s as may be), or that the “Traditional Wabash” so beloved by some students is a fiction and never really existed. Be a conservative. If you think the College is going to hell in a handbasket, don’t be afraid to say so. It’s possible you’re right; institutions have done so before. If you think the liberal arts are being betrayed, don’t be dissuaded from saying so by the words of people who are a little too keen on tolerance and understanding. It’s possible they are being betrayed; it’s certain they are being kissed.
Taken to its logical conclusion, an unquestioning assumption that all change is for the better makes sense only on the assumption that right now we live in the worst of all possible worlds. That’s too pessimistic for me. To find some of the things that are still right in this corner of the world, one need only listen to the last part of Dean Bambrey’s talk. Among the things he mentions: the Mall on a clear night with the stars overhead. The Mall in early morning, with the dew on the grass. The Mall on a snowy late afternoon, its whiteness dazzling. All I can say to that is Amen. I find it impossible to walk across the mall on the sidewalk next to the flag pole and glance across at the Chapel without feeling renewed gratitude for the privilege of attending this school.
Moreover, to move this discussion to the highest plane of all, I am writing this on the day that Good Friday passed into Easter Sunday. Christ is risen. That is such a monumental change for the better that any other change can be tolerated if need be. For all my uncertainties, which are many and severe, about the direction we are moving as a college, a nation, and a world, this is a time when it is good to be alive. God bless you all.
